Fears after government abolishes civil service's child poverty unit

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That is the backdrop to the government’s decision to abolish the child poverty unit – as uncovered by my Labour colleague Dan Jarvis. It may not sound like a big deal. But it follows on from the abolition of the child poverty income targets and a series of policies that have hit low-income families. For all that Theresa May has the right words on helping families, her government has the wrong policies and a fundamentally flawed view of how to tackle poverty and injustice.

Conservative ministers argue that government should focus not on family income but look instead at the root causes of poverty – particularly parental worklessness and educational attainment. But it’s not either/or. Labour tried to do both – that’s why we set up the child poverty unit to coordinate action across every department. And I’m worried that its abolition means the Conservatives now plan to do neither.

Contrary to Conservative rhetoric, the work the child poverty unit did under Labour was on the causes of poverty. Before 1997 child poverty had risen steeply for years. After Tony Blair’s 1999 speech calling for an end to child poverty, ministers from across government worked on a plan for change. Childcare and targeted employment support helped hundreds of thousands of people get into work as a result of the major expansion of childcare and targeted employment support. As health minister in 1999, I worked with the child poverty unit on teenage pregnancy strategy (halving the number of teen mums in a decade) and the roll out of Sure Start children’s centres. As housing minister I worked with the unit on getting families out of bed-and-breakfast accommodation and into secure homes. New policies on tackling domestic violence and improving literacy and numeracy in schools all had an impact.

If the Conservatives had chosen to boost that work on the root causes of poverty that would have been a help. Instead Sure Start centres have closed, homelessness is rising, inequality is widening and now the unit tasked with drawing up a strategy has gone. Just getting parents into work isn’t enough when more than half of the children now living in poverty are in working families, or when parents are too sick or disabled to work. Focusing on educational attainment is really important – but progress will always be limited if children can’t do their maths homework or concentrate on exam revision because they don’t have a roof over their heads.

Nor will it ever work to ignore family income. Money matters and the only people who think it doesn’t are those who have always had plenty of it. If kids grow up feeling cold or hungry, of course they do worse at school. If children can’t go on school trips, or afford the books or opportunities others have, of course they fall behind. If parents are forced to depend on food banks to put a hot meal on the table, that insecurity and anxiety they feel affects the children too. All the evidence shows that both absolute and relative income poverty affect children’s chances in life – and affect their lives for decades to come.

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That’s why Gordon Brown brought in tax credits and why Labour introduced the national minimum wage. As a result of all that work, absolute poverty halved and 600,000 children were lifted out of relative poverty. But the regressive budgets that this government has brought in since 2010 – including huge cuts to tax credits and child benefit – are blighting our children’s future. And like many MPs I am very worried about what is to come when universal credit is rolled out next year.

Just before the 2010 election I worked with other ministers to bring in the Child Poverty Act, embedding targets into law and requiring the government to take action each year. It was our attempt to build cross-party consensus and ensure progress, no matter which party was in power. That’s what we need again now.

Fail to help children and we are failing not just them but our future. If Theresa May really wants to show she cares about working families she should start January by rethinking universal credit, start February by backing Dan Jarvis’s private member’s bill and drawing up a new cross-government plan, and start March with a budget to help working families. Helping children in poverty just needs the political will.